Writing Prompt #2906

About the AO3 "No Guest Comments for a while" warning

If you're not following any of AO3's social media accounts you might be in the dark as to what kind of "spam comments" have engendered this banner at the top of the site:

These spam comments have been posted about a great deal on the AO3 subreddit for the past couple of days. Initially they comprised a bunch of guest (logged out users) bot comments that insulted authors by suggesting they were using AI and not writing their own fics. Some examples, from the subreddit:

But it then escalated to outright graphic porn images and gifs being posted in comments, again by logged out 'Guest' accounts. Obviously, I'm not going to give examples of those, but between these two bot infestations, AO3 has clearly decided to act and has temporarily closed the ability to post comments for users who are not logged in with an AO3 account.

Unfortunately, this means that genuine readers who don't have an AO3 account won't be able to leave comments on fics that they enjoy.

If you are a genuine reader who doesn't yet have an AO3 account, I strongly suggest getting yourself on the waiting list for one. More and more AO3 authors are now locking their fics down to registered users only - either due to these bot comments or concerns about AI scraping their work - which means you're probably missing out on a lot of great stuff.

Hopefully guest commenting will be enabled again at some point soon, but I suggest not waiting until then. Get yourself on that list.

Wait times are going to be longer than usual at the moment, due to the current Wattpad purge [info on Fanlore | Wattpad subreddit thread], but if you're in line, then your invite will come through eventually.

Update: There's now a Megathread about this on the AO3 subreddit.

"Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life."

– Mark Twain

"Loving isn't a lonesome thing."

i have loved you. i have had to deal with that

Reblog if it’s okay to befriend you, ask questions, ask for advice, rant, vent, let something off your chest, or just have a nice chat.

I don't ever know, how to hold the weight of my soul.

When letting go.

But I'm falling in my own illusion,

I don't know my way back.

~Tongue Tied, Beta Radio.

I can't stop thinking about how "Dying Wish" is the song of the Lord of Crime and "Twisted Hearts" is literally Sherlock's love letter to William. 😭

The clipped music used in the episode openings are just a glimpse but listening to the whole songs reveal a lot more. "Dying Wish" is like the manifesto of the Moriartys and tells of William's sacrifice. It also gives hints of William's own suffering.

"Twisted hearts" is Sherlock aching and yearning for William. At first, he believed that he's just a pawn for the Crime Lord—the detective who solves the crimes, the light to match the Crime Lord's darkness.

He struggled to find equal footing, but once he finally saw William eye-to-eye, he realized that they see each other the same way—as dear friends. Uh soulmates actually— *gunshots*

Sherlock knows and feels William's grave sins and deep pains, and here's him wanting William to let him in. He wants to tell William that he has a choice and he's not alone in building the ideal world and future he envisions. Sherlock wants to set William free. T ^ T

“The best way of keeping a secret is to pretend there isn’t one.”

— Margaret Atwood, “The Blind Assassin”

Writing Prompt #2938

"I'm sorry. I'm supposed to be strong." She buried her face in her hands, hoping to hide the tears on her face.

"You are strong. You're okay to keep going. Take all the time you need."

shipping win! they have different but equally terrible coping mechanisms